Classic TT: Dean Harrison tops red-flagged session

Kyle White

Dean Harrison was on the charge on Thursday night as the Bradford rider set the fastest time of the week so far during a shortened practice session on the Isle of Man.

Harrison lapped at 123.580mph on the Silicone Engineering Kawasaki ZXR750 to take over at the top of the Classic Superbike leaderboard from Michael Dunlop, who led the way on three consecutive nights from Monday to Wednesday.

The session was halted shortly before 6.45pm following an incident at Churchtown on the approach to Ramsey, with a machine reported to be on fire.

As the incident was being cleared, fog set in on the Mountain and the decision was taken to cancel the remainder of practice.

Harrison’s time stood as the quickest of the evening, with Gary Johnson (Team York Suzuki) and James Hillier (Greenall Racing Kawasaki) both moving into the overall top five leaderboard in the Superbike class with impressive opening laps of 122.56mph and 122.12mph respectively.

Bruce Anstey finally completed a lap on the Padgetts Yamaha YZR500 at 121.18mph.

Dunlop, after some chassis changes to the Team Classic Suzuki XR69, lapped at 120.51mph

In the Lightweight class, Manx rider Ryan Kneen was fastest with a lap of 111.63mph and moved into the top three overall in qualifying, behind Ian Lougher’s time from Tuesday and Bruce Anstey’s from Wednesday.